THé JAP ANéSé NA VAL SITUATION S EVERAL cronies of mine, mostly literary critics and water-colorists, become loudly authoritative on the subject of the Japanese naval situation when they have had a few glasses of old port, and cut in on the calm, if somew hat confused, analysis of the sit- uation which I am fond of giving at parties. The discussion which follows usually ends up in personalities and re- criminations in which the true state of naval affairs in Japan is lost sight of. F or that reason I determined to write out my analysis of the Japanese naval situation, all alone in my room, and here it is. I have gone to three sources for my information: Mr. Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr., Times correspondent in London; Mr. Wilfrid Fleisher, Herald Tribune cor- respondent in Tokio; and a movie call- ed "The Battle." I have mastered a long article by Mr. Kuhn in the Times, I am still rereading a shorter article by Mr. Fleisher in the Herald Tri- bunp, and I saw "The Battle" three times. To begin with, Japan has for years been improving on her navy. Japan, as a matter of fact, cannot let her navy alone. She is always fiddling with it, adding a tower here, mounting a couple more five-inch cannon there, erecting anti-aircraft guns a hundred feet above a battleship's deck, 'piling on range-find- ers and control stations wherever there is a little space. This I learned from Mr. Kuhn's article in the Times a short while ago. He got it from the authori- tative British naval annual compiled by Dr. Oscar Parkes and called "Jane's Fight- ing Ships." That's what it is called, " J ane's Fio-htina b b Ships." The Times does not explain who Jane is, but as to Dr. Parkes, Mr. Kuhn has this to say: "This will be the last edition of 'Jane's Fighting Ships' which Dr. Parkes will edit. After , seventeen years con- nection with the an- . nual he announces his wor k as a practising physician is too heavy for him to continue. He is well known as a neurologist and his naval work has been only a hobby with him." The Times published Mr. Kuhn's article on the front page, but if you missed it, let me summarize what Dr. Parkes said about the Japanese navy. He said he doubted the stability of the Japanese warships because they are top- heavy, owing to the nervous propensity of the Japanese naval architects for adding guns, towers, range-finders, control stations, etc., to the ships when any other country would have let them alone. Anybody who has piled aunts, bulldogs, sofa cushions, mandolins, etc., in to a canoe knows that it is dangerous business to overload any water craft. But the Japanese, it seems, have gone blandly ahead erecting towers a hun- dred feet high that a blind man could hit with an old Springfield rifle, mount- ing fifteen five-inch guns on ships of a tonnage that will support only twelve safely, and makil1g other blunders like that. Any neurologist knows that if a broadside were fired from an overload- ed battleship, the battleship would turn over on its side and sink. That, then, is what is the matter with the Japanese navy from a structural standpoint. It also has grave faults from the standpoint of personnel. I found this out when I saw the movie "The Battle." In "The Battle," a Japanese naval captain (played by Monsieur Charles Boyer, the French actor) alien- ates his colleagues on the Japanese High Naval Command by telling them that the British navy has all the naval se- crets there are. The captain breaks up his happy marriage in order to learn these naval secrets (by throwing his neglected wife into the way of the hand- some British naval at- taché at Tokio and then rifling the naval a ttaché' s desk and stealing the secrets). So far, then, the Japanese naval situa- tion is clear, at least on the face of it. To summarize briefly: (1) the Japanese warships are topheavy and over-gunned and would capsize at the first broadside, (2 ) the Japanese naval personnel IS not ex- pert because the British have all the na val secrets-aboutfiring-control, gun- elevation, range-finding, etc. There- fore (3) we can all breathe more easily because the Japanese navy would &61 ElB 17 just shoot itself to pieces and drown in the event of war. Unfortunately, however, we have Mr. Wilfrid Fleisher's cable from To- kio to the Herald Tribune to deal with. It is this cable which adds the confusion to my otherwise calm and studied a- nalysis. Let me quote the first paragraph of Mr. Fleisher's cable: "T okio, Dec. 12-Fernand Pila, French Ambassa- dor to Japan, addressed a strongly worded protest to Foreign Minister Koki Hirota today against charges of espionage directed by Japanese news- papers at Lieutenant Tessier Ducros, assistant naval attaché of the French Embassy. The papers have alleged that the French officer cultivated close rela- tions with a number of Japanese wom- en to obtain secret information of na val affairs." Now, I have already proved that the Japanese have no naval secrets: every- thing there is to know about the J apa- nese navy is in "Jane's Fighting Ships." In "The Battle," it is admitted that the Japanese not only have no secrets but would like to get a few from the British. Nevertheless, we have the intimation, straight from T okio, that the Japanese papers believe the French are trying to learn Japan's naval secrets. Further- more, we are asked to believe that a naval officer goes with pretty women in order to learn naval secrets from them. This completely and bewilder- ingly reverses the old established rule that pretty women go with naval of- ficers in order to learn naval secrets from them. No matter how often I go back over my analysis, it always comes to that baffling point. The only conclusion I can come to is that those extra five-inch guns and those topheavy towers can be dumped into the sea at a moment's notice, and every woman in Tokio knows it. But I wouldn't swear to it. I wouldn't swear to anything. All I know is what I read in the papers and see in the movies. -JAMES THURBER . . FIRST LESSON She said, "Since Time began, And to his bitter cost, Four final things has Man Invariably lost. Four things more dear than Truth Elude him still," she said. "Happiness, blotters, Youth, And handkerchiefs in bed." -PHYLLIS MCGINLEY